Congratulations WALKING DEAD Writers! Your Show's A Smash Hit! Now You're All Fired.

From the department of 'If It Aint Broke, Fix It Anyway' comes the following via Deadline:

With the season finale of The Walking Dead coming this weekend and the show now firmly established as a huge rating success story - the show is the highest rated property ever to come from AMC - head honcho Frank Darabont has decided that what he needs to do to prepare for Season Two is to fire the entire writing staff. And, potentially, replace them with nobody.

Now, this is not as extreme as it may seem but the optics are terrible. Of the six episode first season, Darabont wrote two himself and apparently rewrote all of the other four, meaning he had direct, heavy involvement in all six scripts himself. And if that's the case - if Darabont now considers himself another David E Kelley, Aaron Sorkin or J. Michael Straczynski - then it makes sense that he'd question the need to maintain and pay a permanent writing staff moving forward.  Word is that he intends to use freelancers when needed instead, and if he's going to continue having direct involvement in the writing process himself then that should be all that's really needed to maintain continuity.

That said, while it may make sense from Darabont's perspective, it certainly looks terrible. Because most people are generally of the opinion that success should be rewarded with, you know, rewards. Rather than unemployment. Could it be that the powers in charge feel like the show is succeeding despite the writing rather than because of it and are now looking to make a change before launching into the second, much longer season? I'm personally not really a fan of the show and haven't been much impressed by what I've seen so that doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility to me. What do you think?